Le Rocher des Violettes, 2017 Update
A good knowledge of the wines of the Loire Valley has served me well in many restaurants. I flip past the pages listing over-priced and heavily marked-up wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy, and other famous wine regions. The key to drinking wisely in restaurants is seek out less familiar wines from less popular regions, and the Loire Valley often scores well in this regard.
My leaning towards this region certainly paid off a few years ago, at Murano, when I enjoyed greatly the 2010 Montlouis-sur-Loire Négrette from Xavier Weisskopf, of Le Rocher des Violettes. Having tasted with Xavier (pictured above) a handful of times, usually looking at his wines in their youth, it was great to see that the potential I sensed in his wines was real, and that this particular vintage of Négrette was looking good with a couple of years of bottle age on it.
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